Bicycle Thieves 1948

Vittorio De Sica's Neorealism film Bicycle Thieves is set in post war Italy, It's a tragic story about a Husband and father who needs to earn a living for his family. After his bicycle is stolen he is unable to work and he does everything he can to try and get it back, eventually stealing a bicycle himself but being caught, his young son see's and we are left wondering what is to become of the family and how other family's who couldn't even get jobs in the first place.
 I found the film very moving and interesting as all the actors used in the film were amateurs, real people from Italy who knew exactly what life was like at the time, people who were in a way, living the film.

Images like this which show the desperation in the characters faces, here we have Antonio and son Bruno wondering what will happen to them now the bike has gone.
It seems so sad that even a child is having to understand what its like to struggle without a job. But there were simply none going.

Sharon's lecture last week discussed how Realism could be beautiful, and although the pathetic fallacy here portrays the actors loss and sadness as they know that if they don't get the bike back they will be in a very bad situation, how ever there's something to me that makes the image quite beautiful, like Romantic cinema.